An update and expansion of infoDev’s influential print publication Telecom Regulators’ Handbook (issued in 2000), the new web-based toolkit is aimed at national and regional regulatory agencies, ICT policy-makers, and other stakeholders with an active interest in ICT regulation. Nearly 140 countries worldwide now have a national regulatory authority, with the vast majority having been put in place during the last 10 years. These relatively new authorities, many of which have been established as part of a broader programme of national ICT liberalization, have a strong need for reliable and impartial information on regulatory issues and best practice.

"Today’s regulators and policy makers — especially those in the developing world — are seeking practical advice and concrete best practice guidelines to help grow their national ICT markets," said Hamadoun I. Touré, Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT). "The new ICT Regulation Toolkit responds to this demand by providing a first-class product on policy and regulation."

Conceived as a permanently evolving resource, the toolkit consists of a series of modules on key regulatory issues in the rapidly converging ICT sector. The first module, which went live today, deals with the authorization of telecommunication services. It addresses such issues as different authorization approaches and practices, and competitive licensing processes. It also highlights recent trends toward lighter authorization and licensing practices that reduce barriers to market entry.

The 2005 E-Crime Watch survey was conducted by CSO magazine in cooperation with the U.S. Secret Service and Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute’s CERT® Coordination Center. The research was conducted to unearth electronic crime fighting trends and techniques, including best practices and emerging trends. Respondents’ answers are based on the 2004 calendar year. A similar version of this survey was also conducted in 2004 with corresponding answers from the 2003 calendar year. Trending data is provided where relevant.

"Privacy has joined one of many areas of law understandable only by reference to the results of overlapping and conflicting national agendas. What has emerged as the de facto international regime is complex. Yet based on a few simplifying principles, we can nonetheless do much to understand it and predict its operation. First, the idea that self-regulation by the internet community will be the driving force in privacy protection must be laid to rest. The experience of the last decade shows that nation-states, powerful nation-states in particular, drive the system of international privacy. The final mix of privacy protection that the world's citizens receive is disproportionately dictated by the choices and preferences of powerful nation-states and their respective effects on giant and small targets. Second, traditional conflicts analysis can help explain and predict the future course of privacy analysis. Privacy regulation can be understood as a species of information regulation to which companies and individuals will respond in predictable ways. The analysis here shows an international privacy system that has fractured into three distinct regulatory patterns. Mainstream privacy, or transactional privacy, has become dominated by the rule of the most restrictive state, a pattern familiar to other areas like the world's regulation of competition (antitrust). Conversely, the problem of information theft has been pushed by the international system toward a kind of a race to the bottom, or to the least restrictive rule. Most akin to international piracy (the kind on boats), it is a familiar problem to international law that will nonetheless take considerable political will to reverse. And finally, while there is a potential for the international system to influence how governments handle the privacy information of their own citizens, the direct collision of interests have limited the extent to which governments police one another."

"Romanian CDMA operator Zapp has launched a pre-paid mobile broadband internet access service, the first of its type in the country, according to its press release. The Zapp Internet Express Card package includes a modem and a card allowing the user 40 hours of web surfing within six months of activation at a total cost of USD175. Once the initial surf time is up, the user can purchase pre-paid cards of various denominations, starting at USD10 for seven hours."

The Anti-Spyware Coalition proposed a standardized definition of "spyware" on July 12, 2005. The definition, which is open for public comment until August 12, is intended to serve as the foundation for a more unified approach to tackling the spyware problem. In addition to defining spyware, the coalition's first public document also offers uniform definitions of other commonly used terms like "adware" and "cookie," and offers tips for users to avoid downloading unwanted programs.

Yahoo and Cisco have teamed up in an effort to reduce the amount of junk email reaching users' inboxes.

The firms have announced a specification called DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) that they hope will become a web standard. DKIM combines Yahoo's DomainKeys and Cisco's Identified Internet Mail authentication technologies.

In between the meetings of two lead technical groups working on image and video compression, ISO/IEC's JPEG and ITU-T's Study Group 16, ITU will host a Workshop on Video and Image Coding and Applications (VICA) at the ITU headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland, 22 to 23 July 2005. Key experts will join users to review the development, assessment and application of video and image coding and to discuss and start work on an action plan and a roadmap for VICA standardization.

Presentations will instigate discussion on how standards work in the field, including how next generation networks (NGN) can support the development of so-called ubiquitous services - any device, anytime, anywhere. Current work on home network environments will also be taken into account. For more information, see the ITU meeting website.

One of the presentations includes an overview of the ITU-T H.264 standard (also known as MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding (AVC) made by Gary Sullivan, Microsoft, Rapporteur for ITU-T Q.6/16.

Article featured in Total Telecom talks about Japan's intentions to work towards developing an NGN standard.

"The Japanese government is to urge private telecom carriers to upgrade domestic telecoms networks to next-generation IP-based telecommunications networks (NGN) by 2007.

According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper, the policy has been decided in order to try and push Japanese NGN standards in the hope of getting a big slice of the international equipment market for Japanese equipment manufacturers.

The International Telecommunication Union is expected to decide on the global specifications for NGNs by around 2008. The Japanese Ministry of Communications aims to have developed and proposed a standard to the ITU by then after working with the country's major telcos, including Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT), KDDI Corp. and SoftBank, as well as manufacturers of communications equipment including NEC Corp., Fujitsu Ltd., and Hitachi Ltd."

"The ministry hopes Japan will seize the initiative by being the first to come up with a tried and tested set of standards that might be accepted for international adoption, thus giving local manufacturers a huge leg up on international markets. While Japanese manufacturers have dominated their domestic market for telecommunications equipment through working with NTT, U.S. firms control 90% of the global market for routers. The Japanese firms are hoping the switch to a new set of standards for NGNs will help them overcome this imbalance.

The adoption of NGNs is expected to substantially lower communications costs because they will require only half the plant and equipment investment and maintenance expense required for current phone systems, according to the report, which says the networks will use a new breed of low-cost routers. Replacing Japan's current domestic phone networks will require an investment of an estimated 3 trillion to 6 trillion yen (22 billion to 44 billion euros) in plant and equipment over a five-year period. KDDI has been proposing replacement of its copper network by 2007 and NTT by 2010, but the Ministry hopes to speed this up to fit in with the ITU's schedule."

Finnish citizens are to be offered the opportunity to use mobile telephones equipped with digital certificates to identify themselves when conducting business online.

The first SIM cards equipped with the security certificate are now being offered by Elisa, Finland's second-largest mobile network operator, for official transactions with the Finnish Population Register Centre.

If, for example, a citizen wants to register a move to a new home online, he opens the corresponding page on the Internet, fills out the form, and receives a message from the registration office on his mobile telephone requesting him to enter his mobile signature for the online request. The citizen enters a personal PIN to permit the generation of the digital signature. This is generated by the SIM card and returned to the registration office as a special encrypted message.

Citizens who want to use the mobile signature can register at a local police station and sign up for the service. The 128KB, Java-based SIM cards have been supplied by Giesecke & Devrient and are currently available at selected Elisa outlets.

By the end of 2005, the Finnish OKO Bank, the social insurance agency, the Tax Administration, as well as the Ministry of Labour want to offer the mobile citizen certificate as a new form of authentication for their services.

The Office of the Information Commissioner (ICO), enforcer of the UK's main anti-spam laws, has received around 600 spam complaints in the past 12 months. But it has taken no legal action, in part because its powers are inadequate and impractical.

"We already see the capability and the propensity to access audio and video content in different ways at different times and over many different platforms. How do we think about the watershed when the ten year old is watching a PVR stored 18 rated movie on Saturday morning, while the parents are doing the shopping? It's not intrinsically different to what is possible with a VHS; its the ease of access and the immediacy of the access that makes a difference.

How do we think about impartiality of news services for a television home media hub, where the viewer can access not only the traditional, impartial broadcast news services but a range of entirely partial, opinion driven audio and video services over broadband and internet? The content regulation model will have to evolve. David Currie and Stephen Carter have already, in separate contributions, already suggested that the time for a debate is soon. I want to endorse that view and give you a practical reason and a couple of simple ideas about the problem.

The practical reason for pressing ahead, is that the debate about TVWF has begun: * The EUs working proposals include the idea that the regulations be updated to include all audio visual content services, including non-linear content. * We expect a Draft Directive by the end of the year, with the debate kicking off firmly during the UK Presidency. If we seek a consistent approach, in a world where distinctions according to different distribution mechanisms becomes less and less practical, then the question is do you regulate up to the highest common factor or regulate down to the lowest common denominator? Do television standards apply to all content, or do the absence of standards on the internet apply to all television and radio? In a world where significant numbers have video capable broadband access, the question really can be posed as starkly as that. Or is there a compromise somewhere between these starkly opposed positions. Will, in reality, traditional services endure, with everyone accepting a fringe of alternative activity that is beyond the regulatory ambit. A sort of tolerable and tolerated black economy? Accepted because it remains marginal to the main event. Or is there a consistent framework that is beyond general law, but perhaps not as detailed as present day broadcast regulation?

Perhaps the difference can be addressed by a combination of greater personal responsibility alongside practical technologies which enable filtering and labelling. Alongside market choices by companies seeking to offer viewers and web surfers a safe environment, or by opt-in regulation to specified public service standards' which might then be kite marked or certified to indicate, an impartial news service for example. Or indeed there may be by other forms of self regulation which yield similar results."

Article in The Register talks about Scott Richter, who has been dropped from an authorative list of known spammers after cleaning up his act. "Richter and his OptInRealBig option were a fixture in Spamhaus's Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) for years. Only hard-core spammers who become the subject of repeated complaints feature on the list."

"Presence in the rogues gallery makes it difficult to obtain internet service from ethical suppliers and problematic to register domain names. Only those who refrain from sending bulk unsolicited email for six months are eligible for removal from ROKSO. Richter switched to a confirmed opt-in mailing list business model that contrasts with his previous business activities. Richter was sued by New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and brought to the brink of bankruptcy by Microsoft over allegations the he used a network of 500 compromised computers to send millions of junk emails to hapless Hotmail users. Richter denied any such wrongdoing in settling the NY lawsuit last July but he was forced to agree to stop sending deceptive emails and generally abide by the US's CAN SPAM Act."

The first recorded monthly text message total was 5.4 million, in April 1998.

The first TV programme to use text messaging in a storyline was Eastenders, in 2000.

August 2001 was the first month in which over one billion messages were sent in the UK.

The first local and mayoral electoral vote in the UK by text message took place on 23rd May 2002.

December 2002 - 1 billion SMS per day were exchanged globally

On New Year's Day 2003, the number of text messages sent in one day topped one hundred million for the first time.

92 million text messages were sent by Britons on Valentine's Day 2005

In December 2004, 2.4 billion text messages were sent in Britain as the traditional Christmas card was dumped in favour of a seasonal text message.

A-Level - 81 million messages were sent throughout the UK on August 19th 2004, compared to 67 million text messages on A-level result day, August 14th 2003.

The Rt. Hon Tony Blair MP became the first UK Prime Minister to use text message technology to talk directly to the people on 25th November 2004, answering questions submitted in advance by text message from members of the public as well as in real-time in a mobile phone chat-room, transmitted live from No. 10 Downing Street.

On New Year's Day 2005, the total number of text messages sent reached 133 million, the highest recorded daily total.

The MDA has forecast that a total 30 billion text messages will be sent in the UK by the end of 2005 compared to the figure of 26 billion for 2004.

53 million UK subscribers were registered as active on UK networks as of the end of September 2004, of which over 70% send text messages.

Text messages contribute up to 20 % of operator revenues.

95% of 16-24 year olds use text messaging regularly, each sending an average of 100 texts per month In 2004, UK mobile phone owners sent an average of 72 million text messages on a typical day across the four UK GSM network operators

An FWC article featuring resources and the fight against electronic crime points out that although "electronic crimes are increasing at an alarming rate, there is a lack of reliable statistics measuring the frequency, size and impact of such crimes and little scientific research being done to profile the perpetrators".

An interview in the article also mentions that "law enforcement officials need better capabilities and more resources to deal with electronic crime whether it is committed in cyberspace or traditional crimes involving digital devices."

The article goes further on to say that "Some businesses aren’t reporting cybercrimes to law enforcement, but instead handling them internally. With the advent of instant messaging, voice over IP and other communication technologies, there are legal issues of intercepting messages to determine whether a crime has been committed. And getting information about possible crimes from Internet Service Providers might also pose a problem."

The U.S. Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, has released a draft version of the minimal security requirements for federal agencies. The reportcomes one month after government auditors found that the agencies are not prepared to deal with the triple Internet menaces of spam, phishing and spyware.

John Cox writes in NetworkWorld: The IEEE group charged with creating a standard for wireless LAN mesh is rounding up about 15 proposals at this week’s 802.11 meeting in San Francisco. Members of the 802.11s task group hope to have a draft standard completed in 12 to 18 months. Today's wireless LAN mesh networks use proprietary algorithms and are typically deployed outdoors. With a IEEE mesh standard implemented by WLAN vendors, it's possible that in the future every wireless LAN would also be able to configure itself as a mesh network, similar in concept to the Internet. A wireless mesh uses a radio to interconnect the access points and route wireless packets over the best available route. Mesh benefits include potentially higher performance and more reliable nets.

For a quantative analysis of mesh network benefits, see Dave Beyer's presentation linked from in this article.

A recent PCWorld.com article article reports that "The U.S. Department of Homeland Security needs to develop a recovery plan for widespread attack on the Internet, and it needs stable leadership in cybersecurity".

The article goes on to say that "While DHS can track Internet threats, it doesn't have an Internet recovery plan or a national cybersecurity threat assessment". Seemingly DHS is making progress but more work still needs to be done.

Last week Cisco joined Yahoo, Sendmail and PGP Corp. in submitting the DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) specification to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). DKIM results from Cisco and Yahoo merging separate e-mail verification technologies with similar attributes, which both companies had worked on for more than a year.

"Since all this [spam] traffic is running on Cisco networks in large part, many customers often ask, 'Why can't Cisco do something about it?' " says Sanjay Pol, vice president and director of Cisco's Anti-Spam Initiative. "The less trust people have of the Internet, the worse it is for Cisco and our customers."

A study titled "Open to Exploitation: American Shoppers Online and Offline" finds that "Internet users in the United States are dangerously ignorant about the type of data that Website owners collect from them and how that data is used, making them vulnerable to fraud and misuse of their personal information".

The IETF has finally emitted the email anti-spoofing documents for the SPF and Sender-ID protocols. The most important thing is that the two protocols are issues as experimental RFCs, not standards. There is a huge difference, and the IESG tried to make that as clearas possible:

"The following documents (draft-schlitt-spf-classic, draft-katz-submitter, draft-lyon-senderid-core, draft-lyon-senderid-pra) are published simultaneously as Experimental RFCs, although there is no general technical consensus and efforts to reconcile the two approaches have failed. As such these documents have not received full IETF review and are published "AS-IS" to document the different approaches as they were considered in the MARID working group.

The IESG takes no position about which approach is to be preferred and cautions the reader that there are serious open issues for each approach and concerns about using them in tandem. The IESG believes that documenting the different approaches does less harm than not documenting them.

The community is invited to observe the success or failure of the two approaches during the two years following publication, in order that a community consensus can be reached in the future."

And, to be clear, neither protocol is directly anti-spam: they simply help the receiver believe that the mail is sent by the organization that claims it sent the message.

On 15 July 2005 WSIS Executive Secretariat released the Advanced Draft of Stocktaking Report (WSIS-II/PC-3/DOC/3). The Report is available here.

This advanced draft of the stocktaking report has been prepared on the basis of activities received up to 10 July 2005. It is posted for comments and additional inputs, which should be sent to wsis-stocktaking@itu.int before 15 August 2005. The draft will then be revised and translated for PrepCom-3.

The European Commission has issued a decision on the harmonised use of radio spectrum in the 5 GHz frequency band for the implementation of Wireless Access Systems including Radio Local Area Networks (WAS/RLANs). Additional background information is available in a press release and here.

European Commission and roaming charges: The European Union is planning a web site to help cut mobile phone charges.

Phone companies charge consumers too much for using mobile phones while abroad, the European Commission stated, promising to publish details of charges in an effort to let market forces push down prices. The European Union executive has been probing international roaming charges for years amid accusations that mobile phone operators are ripping off customers who make mobile calls while on trips abroad. Together with telecoms regulators from the EU 25 nations, the Commission has now concluded that "retail charges in the European Union are currently very high without clear justification." Roaming charges are also very complex and murky for most users which prevents full competition, the Commission said. The Commission's remedy is a Web Site from this autumn that lists all charges when mobile phone users travel from one country to another, Commission spokesman Martin Selmayr told a daily news briefing.

Deutsche Telekom's (DTEGn.DE) T-Mobile unit rejected the Commission's charges. "We don't think that is justified. We have recently taken several measures to cut roaming fees and to make them more transparent. Apart from that, we can only pass on what the foreign operators charge us, and we see some discrepancies there especially when it comes to southern Europe," said a spokesman for T-Mobile International.

An article talks to the steps forward on the the convergence of television and the internet taken by United States phone companies.

A new push is being made to deliver television over an internet platform, with the potential to transform the medium into a new technology that offers more competition and program choices. The long-awaited "convergence" of television and the internet is being pushed, interestingly, by the major regional US phone companies SBC Communications and Verizon, which plan to roll out their first systems later this year in the US market. BellSouth, another major phone carrier, is also testing Internet protocol television (IPTV), and trials are underway in Britain, Switzerland and elsewhere.

Delivering television via Internet technology would give viewers access to virtually unlimited channels and programs, because instead of "pushing" video through a cable with limited capacity, the viewer would access servers that store the content. IPTV would also make the TV set and computer interchangeable and allow consumers to schedule or record programs via other devices, such as mobile phones. "While cable companies are constrained by the size of their pipe, we have virtually unlimited content potential," said SBC spokesman Larry Solomon.

The US FCC has recently released new data on high speed Internet use by US businesses and households where they state growth in 2004 has risen 34% for a total of 38 million lines in service. The full report (PDF) is available on the FCC web site.

European Union home affairs ministers have promised that in October they will agree on a set of Europe-wide rules requiring companies to store phone call and e-mail data. The pledge was made at an emergency meeting of ministers in Brussels on Wednesday in response to the bombings in London last week which killed over 50 people.

The rules would require fixed and mobile telephone operators, ISPs (Internet service providers) and SMS (short messaging service) providers to keep data for at least a year with a possible maximum of three years. Only traffic data such as the time, duration and destination of calls would be kept, not the content of communications.

According to IT and Telecoms: Liberalisation of the long-distance telecommunications market has been postponed from 1 July 2005 until 1 January 2006, Russia Journal reported on the press service of the IT and Telecommunications Ministry. The government has been asked by the Ministry for the delay because some documents required for the deregulation had not yet been drafted by the Economy Ministry. According to the Telecommunications Ministry, the postponement has already been ratified. The Ministry itself asserts that it has presented all the documents required.

Russia Journal further informs that long-distance telecommunications services were included into the list of licensed services in February this year. Prior to that, Rostelecom had been the only nationwide long distance and international telecommunications operator. In late May, the federal telecommunications supervision service granted licenses to three more operators – Centerinfocom, Golden Telecom and Multiregional Transit Telecom (MTT). However, these three companies are not entitled to render the services unless the rules of joining, which stipulate operators’ behavior on the market, come into effect.

The Nigerian Anti-Scam Network is a movement that is composed of Nigerians who are concerned about the bad image that cybercrime and spam has brought to Nigeria. The Nigerian Anti-Scam Network is an online youth network consisting of young Nigerian professionals who are concerned about the situation and are willing to take actions for change. They aim to expose the supporters and perpetrators of online crimes on their online message boards so that people have a place where they can do spot-checks and thus hopefully avoid being spammed. The Network expresses its concern that foreign parties have anti-scam sites that are little more than anti-Nigeria sites. They believe that the activities of the Nigerian Anti-Scam Network can give a more balanced opinion.

The Network realizes that; "throughout the world, cyber crime is a very serious topic and a very contentious one at that. A lot of countries are losing a lot of money due to the activities of cyber 419s. Nigeria have been touted as the major breeding ground for most of these online scams. Nigeria's ranking in the corruption index have been very discouraging for the past three years and we know that this is not only as a result of Government officials' corruptness, but also as a result of activities of online scammers. To be better prepared to fight these menace and bring back our lost reputation, some young Nigerian professionals started the Nigerian Anti-Scam network and have been doing extensive research on the activities of these scammers and ways of salvaging the country's image."

This booklet has three sections that seek to look at how national and regional Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) might be created, particularly in the African context but it also draws on lessons from elsewhere:

Section One looks at the African policy context out of which IXPs came and outlines the practical reasons for implementing them on the continent.

Section Two describes how national IXPs have been set up and deals with both the people and technology issues that have to be addressed. It also identifies ways in which the regulatory framework can be made more favourable to encourage their successful operation.

Section Three looks at the next logical step: how it might be possible to connect national IXPs so that data can flow between countries without needing to leave the continent. It summarizes: the discussions to date about the best approach to this task; the option chosen by AfrISPA; and what needs to happen to make it a reality.

There is also a discussion of the regulatory issues that may need to be considered and the appendices of the booklet contain a list of useful documents and references.

Following months of discussions, China has agreed to sign up to the London Action Plan, which will mean greater cooperation between countries in analyzing spam campaigns, investigating their origin and encouraging ISPs around the world to take appropriate measures to defend innocent users.

The information presented within this blog comes from various organizations around the world. ITU encourages users to seek more detailed information from the original source through the links provided.
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